Made in America

Robert Downey Jr. brands himself in "Iron Man," but it's an amusing, half-finished package (Film Review).

by Michael Sean McGowan

The Upside: Popcorn done the smart way.

The Downside: A duel to the death with Jeff Bridges just doesn't scream epic.

    In the way comic book movies have become their own mini-genre in the last few decades, they've come to a point where they create their own set of expectations and criteria to be judged by and even their own internal rankings of near-brilliance (Spider-Man 2) to sloth (Catwoman).  They've also become quite good a playing electro-magnet with A-list Hollywood talent, although the chatter about who-plays-who makes for interesting parlor trivia and some resonance (many may remember Tobey Maguire as the best Spider Man, but he won't be the only), they're also designed like generic oil filters- meant to be swapped out at a moment's notice.  I can't remember a time when an actor brought so much of themselves to the party that they became an almost integral, custom component.

    That kind of thinking ends up in a purge file with Iron Man.  In the continuing continuum of Marvel escapades this telling of the tale of souped-up Mr. Roboto Tony Stark doesn't manage more than a pleasingly above average yellow, but it has one thing none of its brethren does- an actor so keyed-in to its lead that his performance, his presence, is like the middle cookie in a stack of Oreos.  This isn't to say that Iron Man is so weak it needs to be saved by Robert Downey Jr., but I can picture other people playing Batman.  We already have our second Incredible Hulk in five years.  But there's a synergy here with Downey, who in another life I could definitely picture being an unabashed billionaire playboy and borderline-narcissistic weapons magnate, that director Jon Favreau (Elf, Zathura) takes full advantage of.  Best example?  The greatly-improvised dialogue sequences that just about drip acidic with Downey's barbed motor-mouth, including a gem of an opening five minutes that takes place in a traveling Humvee in Afghanistan in which Downey and his alter-ego Tony Stark's own rollicking charisma just about melts the armored, heavily armed soldiers around him... just moments before the convoy gets blown off the road.

    The comic story of Iron Man played out as a sci-fi version of what Howard Hughes' life might have been like if he'd found his conscience instead of descending into madness.  Captured by a throng of Afghani terrorists (words like "Taliban" and "Al-Queda" are none-existent here) who want him to recreate his latest innovation, the Jericho missile, Stark instead builds himself an escape plan in the form of a walking, flame-spitting erector set and for us in the post-9/11 period we can at least can give the cheap seat rah-rahs for seeing the war on terror played out the Hollywood way with lots of things that go "boom!"  His world-view shaken (his captors, it turns out, attacked the convoy with a personal arsenal of Stark weapons), he returns home to... well, if you're keyed enough to even be thinking of this movie you know the rest and besides, it's never really clear why Stark takes to building a leaner, meaning mechanized, cherry-red robot suit other than the inevitable fate of rolling out one more Marvel character onto the big screen before we finally get to Abigail Breslin as Squirrel Girl (yes, there actually is a Squirrel Girl.  I'm not kidding).

    The best thing that can be said about Iron Man is that it doesn't take its audience for granted- and that's no feint praise in a sub-genre like this.  No, it's not a sucker-imagination-punch like Spider-Man was, and unlike Fantastic Four it doesn't use its sense of humor as a dodge for its own vapidness.  However the writing is solid, the casting even beyond Downey is accomplished (props to any movie with Mr. Hustle and Flow, Terrence Howard), and it doesn't have a story (or lack of one) that'll make you feel bad about yourself in the morning.  But the one that it does have feels aluminum-foil thin and this is the one thing that keeps Iron Man down- the movie is mostly build with a relatively weak pay-off (our super villain du-jour is Jeff Bridges, complete in Rob Reiner make-up, as a weapons tycoon with his own Rock'em Sock'em robot).  This means Iron Man is robbed of the opportunity of having any really memorable set pieces, even if a few make for clever in-jokes such as when Stark tests flies his new suit and ends up no better than Howard Hughes did with many of his own hard-flying escapades.  If there is plenty of love to give, the biggest problem is that Iron Man feels like it is on hold for its own sequel, like it's the prologue for a follow-up that'll be coming a few years down the road.

    The movie looks clean and convincing, again a pleasant surprise coming from a director like Favreau who got his start with indie films like Swingers.  It's just that it is difficult the movie in its own right since it comes off as more of set-up for things to come.  It avoids the soulless traps of movies like Daredevil and Ghost Rider which banked everything in on an actor, street cred, and let everything else go to seed.  Downey is the selling point of Iron Man, but at no point does it seem like Favreau is banking the whole show on him.  Smart man.  B